Cius

Stand near the water here and listen. Small waves slap against the stone edge of the shore. Gulls call over the gulf. Somewhere behind you a café radio plays, and the air carries salt, diesel from a fishing boat, and the faint, oily smell of olives. This is modern Gemlik, a working town on the Sea of Marmara. Under its streets and harbour lies a much older city, one the ancient Greeks called Cius.

You will not find a grand ruined temple or a ring of marble columns here. That is the first thing to understand about Cius. Its story lives mostly in old texts, in scattered stones, and in the shape of the land itself. So let us read the landscape together. The bay in front of you, the hills that fold down to the water, the valley that opens inland... these are the features that drew settlers here nearly three thousand years ago.

Look at the geography. This gulf cuts deep into the coast, so ships found shelter from the open Marmara. Inland, a river valley runs back towards a large lake, the one known in antiquity as Lake Ascania and today as Lake Iznik. That made this spot a natural door. Goods from the interior of Anatolia could come down to the sea here, and goods from across the Greek world could travel up.

Ancient writers tell us that Greek colonists settled Cius, and many link the city to Miletus. Miletus was a powerful Greek city on the Aegean coast of what is now Turkey. Its sailors founded dozens of trading towns around the Black Sea and the Marmara. Cius fits that pattern well. It was a harbour town looking outward to the sea, with farmland and forests at its back.

Now for a story that is legend, not history. In Greek myth, the hero Jason sailed with the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece. On the way, the ship stopped on this coast. A young companion of Heracles, named Hylas, went to fetch water from a spring. The nymphs of the spring fell in love with him and pulled him down into the water. He was never seen again.

Heracles searched the woods, calling his name, and the ship sailed on without them. In one version of the tale, told by the poet Apollonius of Rhodes, another Argonaut who stayed behind went on to found Cius. Ancient writers also describe a local custom. Each year, people walked into the hills and called out for Hylas, as if he might still answer. Whether or not anyone believed it, the ritual tied the town to the oldest stories of the Greek world.

The real history turns darker at the end of the third century before Christ. Cius was caught between rival kings. Philip the Fifth of Macedon, ruler of the Greek kingdom to the north, captured and destroyed the city around 202 BCE. Its people were enslaved. The ruin of Cius shocked the Greek world, and it became one of the complaints that helped draw Rome into eastern affairs.

Philip handed the site to his ally, Prusias the First, king of Bithynia. Bithynia was a kingdom in this northwestern corner of Anatolia. Prusias rebuilt the town and gave it his own name, Prusias by the Sea. Here is a detail many visitors miss. The same king is remembered in the name of the big city just to the south of you. Bursa comes from Prusa, another town linked to the Bithynian kings.

Over time, the old name Cius came back into use. Under Roman rule, the town stayed a modest port in a rich province. Later, in the Byzantine period, it was known as Kios. Byzantine means the eastern Roman empire, ruled from Constantinople, today's Istanbul. Constantinople lies not far across the water to the northwest, and this gulf served as one of its supply routes.

In the early Ottoman period, the town passed into Ottoman hands, and the name slowly shifted to Gemlik. For centuries it held a mixed population, including a large Greek-speaking community. That community left in the early twentieth century, during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Many families carried the memory of Kios with them, and some new settlements in Greece took names that recall this coast.

Now turn your attention to the hills. Those silvery-green slopes are olive groves. Gemlik is known across Turkey for its small black table olives, often found on breakfast tables from Istanbul to the far east of the country. Olive growing on this coast is ancient, and it is easy to imagine the farmers of Cius working similar slopes. The local market is a good place to taste the difference between the varieties.

As you walk, keep your eyes low. In older parts of the town, and sometimes in walls and courtyards, you may notice blocks of worked stone that look older than the buildings around them. Across Anatolia, ancient stone was often reused in later houses, mosques and churches. This is the quiet way that cities like Cius survive. They are not gone. They are built into what came after.

So take one more look at the gulf before you move on. The ships are different now, the town is louder, and the old harbour walls are hidden. But the shelter of this bay is the same. The valley still leads inland, and the olives still ripen on the hills. When the wind picks up off the water, you might even imagine a faint voice in the woods, calling for Hylas.